This week’s Young Apprentice task took us back to nursery – the children’s variety, not the horticultural kind – as the Apprenti-Kids™ were asked to design and pitch a new product for the mother-and-baby market. They were forced to get to grips with toddler tantrums, bouts of hopeless inarticulacy and one participant spitting his dummy. (The babies, on the other hand, were extremely good.) All this proved to be bad news for gardening entrepreneur Ben Fowler, who was all fingers-and-thumbs rather than green-fingered and found himself on the receiving end of an entirely different type of finger: Lord Sugar‘s deadly Digit of Doom™.
Harry Hitchens
It’s summer, and an unruly mob of teenagers are causing havoc. They rob people blind, accost them in the streets and ruthlessly grab whatever opportunities present themselves. No, I’m not talking about the London riots. It’s the return of the newly rebranded Young Apprentice. Yes, the Apprenti-Kids™ are back for eight weeks of puerile puns (and that’s just Lord Sugar), finger-pointing (and that’s just Lord Sugar) and unfathomably illogical decisions (and … you get the idea).
It has been three long months since the comforting strains of Prokofiev’s Dance of the Knights – the theme music for BBC’s The Apprentice – were last heard on our TV screens. Three long months since our last weekly hour-long dose of bitching, over-inflated egos and unfeasibly stupid business ideas. Three long months since serial inventor – and Michael Sheen lookalike – Tom Pellereau surprisingly defeated runaway favourite Helen Milligan (and also-rans ‘Jedi’ Jim Eastwood and Susan Ma) to win the season seven final. (Although it wasn’t a surprise to me, as I had backed Tom for victory early on. *Smug mode*)
But fear no more. The man with the meanest finger on television – the incomparable Digit of Doom™ – has returned. The Baron of Business, the self-styled Britain’s most belligerent boss, Lord Sugar, returns to our screens to put 12 candidates aged 16-17 through their paces as he once again hunts for a Young Apprentice. (No, I don’t know why they’ve abandoned ‘Junior Apprentice’ either.)
Yes, the Apprentikids™ are back!